WINNERS
Poems on this page have been judged “winners” over the years (since 2004). Honorable Mentions (HMs) are included. Most recent titles are listed first and the poems are in the same order below. Some were published later, as noted. I like a few of my “losers” better, but then who am I to judge a poem’s merit? Answer: A somewhat obsessive-compulsive poet, staying out of worse trouble by keeping track of stuff like this.
Substitutes: Second honorable mention at the 94th Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2020, Love category.
Two Woods: Third prize, Bay Area Poets' Coalition Contest 40, 2020. Published in the February 2020 Crockett Signal (Issue 336).
Chromatic Compulsion: First honorable mention at the 100th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2019, Humorous category. Published in the April 2020 Crockett Signal (Issue 338).
Many a Slip twixt the Cup and the Lip: First prize at the 93rd Annual Poets' Dinner, 2019, Humorous category. Published in the May 2019 Crockett Signal (Issue 328).
Vessel: Second honorable mention at the 93rd Annual Poets' Dinner, 2019, People category. Published in the May 2019 Crockett Signal (Issue 328).
Avian Angles: Second honorable mention at the 99th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2018, Nature category.
Published in the December 2018 Crockett Signal (Issue 323).
She Was Quotable: Fourth honorable mention at the 99th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2018, People category. Published in the December 2018 Crockett Signal (Issue 323).
Josephine (1986-2014): Second honorable mention at the 91st Annual Poets' Dinner, 2017, Beginning & Endings category. Published in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Anthology 2017-2018 The Gathering 14.
Vicarious Exercise: Third prize, 97th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2016, Humor category. Published in the May 2021 Crockett Signal, Issue 348.
Coastal Jewelry: Second prize at the Bay Area Poets Coalition (BAPC) 2015/16 Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Poetry Contest 36. Published in the February 2016 Crockett Signal (Issue 292).
On Kay Ryan's Facebook Fan Page: Third honorable mention, 89th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2015, Humor category. Published in Crossing the Strait (2016), the sixth anthology of the Benicia First Tuesday Poets.
Reconsidering My Relationship to the Artichoke: Second honorable mention, 95th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2014, Humor category. Published online in Issue 44, January 13, 2015, of MOREthanaPoemDaily, linked to: www.Beniciafirsttuesdaypoets.com
Also published in Crossing the Strait (2016), the sixth anthology of the Benicia First Tuesday Poets, and in Issue 340, August 2020, of the Crockett Signal.
Invisibly Peopled: Fifth honorable mention, 95th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2014, People category. Published in Crossing the Strait (2016), the sixth anthology of the Benicia First Tuesday Poets.
The Green Beans from His Garden: Third prize, 88th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2014, Theme: Forbidden. Published in The Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Anthology 2015-16 The Gathering 13, and the September/October 2020 Crockett Signal, Issue 341.
Not Keeping Up: Third honorable mention, 94th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2013, Humor category. Published in Crossing the Strait (2016), the sixth anthology of the Benicia First Tuesday Poets, and in the December 2020 Crockett Signal, Issue 343.
Notes: Third honorable mention, Bay Area Poets Coalition 2011/12 Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Contest 33, Maxi category. The footnote, which I did not submit with the poem, is interesting reading, so I've included its URL at the end.
Colonized: Fourth honorable mention, 93rd Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2012, Humor category. Published in Bay Area Poets Coalition POETALK 2018-19.
The Poet at our Table: First prize, 86th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2012, People category. Published in The Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Anthology 2013-14 The Gathering 12.
Lunar Balance: Third honorable mention, 86th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2012, Theme: Balance. My moon photo was not included with submitted poem. Published in Bay Area Poets Coalition POETALK 2012-Winter 2013.
Enthusiasms: Third honorable mention, 86th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2012, Humor category. Added to "Why Joke" page (see menu to the left).
Seduction: Second prize, 92nd Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2011, Nature category. Published in Sign of the Times/Anthology 4/Benicia First Tuesday Poets (2012) and in the November 2019 Crockett Signal, Issue 333.
Exit 27 Without A/C: First honorable mention, 92nd Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2011, Theme: Heat. "Directed Curves" by Robert Chapla has been added to this page to make the poem more ekphrastic. Published in Light and Shadow, the Benicia First Tuesday Poets' 7th anthology, 2018, and the Sept-Oct 2018 Crockett Signal, Issue 321.
Herded: Third honorable mention, 92nd Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Banquet, 2011, Humor category.
Fatigue is the Best Pillow: Voted best poem in the Benjamin Franklin Proverbs into Poetry Contest November 1, 2011; all poems on exhibit at the Benicia Public Library, Benicia, CA, August 26-December 1, 2011. Published online by ac5 in the November 2011 edition of ArtBeat in the Literary Corner's Selected Poets of Contra Costa by contributing editor Maria Rosales, as well as in the July 2021 Crockett Signal, Issue 350.
Connection Conundrum: Second honorable mention, 85th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2011, Light & Humorous category. See it on the Why Joke page at this site. Published in Bay Area Poets Coalition POETALK 2018-19.
Simplify: Third honorable mention, 85th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2011, Beginnings & Endings category.
Old Photos: 2011 Benicia Love Poetry Contest honorable mention, published in the Benicia Love Poetry booklet "honoring an early California romance," sponsored by the City of Benicia Poet Laureate Program and the Benicia Public Library.
Pedicure: Third honorable mention, 91st Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle National Poetry Day Banquet, 2010, humor category; published in the December 2010 Crockett Signal. Find it on the Why Joke page at this site.
Question Mark: Fifth honorable mention, 91st Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle National Poetry Day Banquet, 2010, Poet's Choice category. Published in Taproot & Aniseweed No. 33, April 2013. Published in Light and Shadow, the Benicia First Tuesday Poets' 7th anthology, 2018. Published in the August 2021 Crockett Signal, Issue 351.
Fumbling: Second honorable mention, 2010 Benicia Library Poets Love Poem Contest. Published in the Winning Poems Booklet by R. M. Shelby, Southampton House.
Fish Wrap: Second honorable mention, 84th Annual Poets' Dinner, 2010, Beginnings & Endings category. Published in The Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Anthology 2011-12 The Gathering 11, and in the April 2021 Crockett Signal, Issue 347.
Driving in Rain: First honorable mention, 90th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle National Poetry Day Banquet, 2009, Loss category.
Returning: Fourth honorable mention, 90th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle National Poetry Day Banquet, 2009, Journeys category.
Nexus: Third prize, 83rd Annual Poets' Dinner, 2009, Spaces and Places category.
She Carries Herself: Second prize at the Bay Area Poets Coalition Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Poetry Contest - 2008/9, Midi category (25 or fewer lines). Published in Issue 215, February 2009 Crockett Signal. Published in 2009 Gathering 10 (Ina Coolbrith Circle).
Explanation to a Grief Group: Third prize, 82nd Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2008, Beginning and Endings category. Published online at FlakeHQ.com
Fenced: First prize, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc., for November 2007’s theme: Fences. Published in CFCP newsletter.
To Our California Landlord: First honorable mention, 87th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Day Contest, 2006, California category. Published in the May 2021 Crockett Signal, Issue 348.
Mango: Third prize from the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc., for August 2006’s theme, Wine and Food. Published in CFCP newsletter.
Imaginary Occupants: Second prize with Mary Reusch at Lowell Arts Center, Lowell, MI, Hudson Gallery in 2006, where my poem accompanied her “Chelberg House Wash” painting. A pretty good photo of the painting is included below.
Amygdala: Third honorable mention, 86th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Day contest, 2005. Published in the September/October 2021 Crockett Signal.
Berkeley Poetry Walk: Third prize, 79th Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2005, Spaces and Places category. Published in Peter Bray’s Taproot & Aniseweed.
Heart of Darkness: Third prize, 79th Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2005, Humor category.
Published in Issue 173, May 2005 Crockett Signal, in the 2007 Carquinez Poetry Review, and is on my Caffeinated Poems page at this site.
Before 6 A.M: First prize at 78th Annual Poets’ Dinner, 2004, Beginnings & Endings category. Published 2006 in Gathering 8 (Ina Coolbrith Circle).
SUBSTITUTES
Your plastic tortoise shell comb
tossed into our wastebasket
because a few teeth were missing
I picked up and continue using
decades after your death.
Without it I can’t make a part.
To keep us together, I let your comb rest
in my blue metal hairbrush.
Magical thinking? Yes.
Yet I do realize we’re apart,
that you’ve left the realm
I’m still in and know
that if you’re a ghost,
we are now even more unalike
than these objects I use daily,
our substitutes I’ve again enmeshed.
TWO WOODS
Emerging into this world years ago,
I took shape to become what you see now,
a thick plum tree shedding fruit by a fence
while rubbing my bark against its wood.
We two have been together long enough
for me to note our differences—
I upright, alive, and growing,
the fence horizontal and dead.
If there is one,
I contemplate the afterlife
of whatever tree this fence was part of.
Listen to the squeaky music this afternoon's
wind is forcing us to make. I like it.
Even if my limbs abrade from rubbing
against this fence’s firm remains,
our music stirs within me a memory
of a forest somewhere,
perhaps where our ancestors lived,
a place I can imagine, but cannot go,
a place some part of me has known.
CHROMATIC COMPULSION
On sunny, cloudless days, she wore blue
with a touch of yellow. When snow fell,
she changed to white. If it rained, she stayed
indoors, not because she might get wet
but because her garb had to be diaphanous.
This caused her some inconvenience,
so she consulted a psychiatrist.
He checked his manual but could find
no name for this behavior. It was not psychotic,
since she was in touch with reality and did not
expect anything to happen, good or bad,
as a result of her wardrobe choices.
In his case notes he named her condition
Chromatic Compulsion. When the environment
wasn’t affecting her choice of what to wear,
what she ate began to do the same.
Wearing magenta, she chose beets for lunch.
Before she added lettuce to make a salad,
she put on a green sweater. Eating pumpkins,
peaches, or papaya sent her to her closet
for something orange. Over the years,
he dealt with her problems as they came
and went, but once they agreed about
how pleasant it was to sip coffee
and eat chocolate at their regular Wednesday
appointment, he wore brown on Wednesdays,
realizing it only when she asked him
if her condition could be contagious.
MANY A SLIP TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP
My grandmother, an excellent seamstress,
made her dresses from fabric strips,
some intricate, some plain.
By the time I was born, her cheeks formed vertical creases
next to her lips, a facial topography
that caused mealtime spills, sometimes a stain.
After removing ruined fabric, she would replace it
with an update to join the other strips that rode
to her ankles from below her chin.
These vertical panels did not match each other,
so her chest was protected by an ever-changing landscape,
her one-of-a-kind scrim.
Like my grandmother's, my face has slid
and creased. Our shared topography
sometimes keeps me from looking my best.
If I could recreate the clothes my grandmother
concocted, I'd carry on her fashion eccentricity,
continually change my upfront scenery,
and wear less of a mess on my chest.
VESSEL
Sailing from Seattle to Juneau,
borne by the ocean that we know
as the mother of us all,
four generations of our family
cruise together.
We two who are the second tier
gaze at the smaller vessel
who got us here.
Nearly 94 years old,
she sleeps solidly
as if in dry dock.
Her delicate hull is painted red
by a Chinese robe.
She could be a bright bird
briefly stopped in flight
after landing on a beach
as white as the ship’s
crisp cotton sheets.
Sharing a cabin with her,
my sister and I,
her brood of two,
catch each other’s eyes
and nod in shared gratitude
for our mom’s continuing
rhythmic breathing
while far below
in its own rhythm
the ocean rocks our vessel
in sloshing beats
of parting and meeting.
AVIAN ANGLES
Eight birds perch on a phone line
above a stop sign a block ahead of me.
All face the same way.
Joining the queue of cars
perpendicular to the birds’ perch,
I look up through their even avian spacing.
When their cheeping reaches my ears,
the feathered part of my brain
deciphers their chatter
about what copycats we humans
below them are, how we too
aim our beaks in the same direction.
One somewhat empathetic bird
turns to the next to caw her combination
of pity and disdain for our species
as we wait trapped
in the cages of our cars,
unable to fly away.
SHE WAS QUOTABLE
Wanting to feel safer in 1941
as she began her seventh decade,
my great aunt Mary left Ohio
to live in Hawaii near my grandmother,
her only living relative.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
and a stray shell landed near
Aunt Mary’s new residence
in downtown Honolulu,
Dad drove to pick her up
before joining his father
and our neighbors to clean spiders,
scorpions, and centipedes
from the cave inside the hill
over which we lived.
At sunset on December 7th
our family and neighbors agreed
the cave was safer for the night
than our homes. Everyone gathered there.
All night my great aunt leaned against a rock,
holding me, age three, in her lap.
Asked the next day how she had slept,
Aunt Mary replied, "I never sleep well
the first night in a strange place."
JOSEPHINE, 1986-2004
Which is it?
Light leaving
or dark seeping in?
Using a language she somehow understands,
I tell her she is too thin,
that soon the pain will be gone.
We’ve had eighteen years by my counting,
eternal nows by hers.
Does she feel
every night arriving later
during this, her almost summer,
the other seasons over?
In the fluorescent light
above the steel table
life will blend into its full spectrum of white.
The needle in, she may remember
an event or two
in the bright before dark,
before she becomes her lidded void,
her thought-out thoughts,
before her breath is stopped.
VICARIOUS EXERCISE
I lie here reading books on exercise,
but thoughts of calisthenics bring on sighs.
My lazy self claims moving is unwise.
In spite of threats it stays right where it lies.
Although I’ve tried my best, I now surmise
with disappointment but no small surprise:
my body will be flaccid ‘til it dies
except, of course, for two well-muscled eyes.
COASTAL JEWELRY
Pulsating along California’s
coastal throat,
we’re moving strands
of jewelry, walled off
from oncoming diamonds
piercing our sight.
Rows of rubies
stretch out before us
in sparkling bursts,
adding their color
to California’s
palette of twilight.
My rear-view mirror
shows our gems in reverse.
The double diamonds
glitter behind me,
our glowing threads,
knotted tight.
California cushions us
in one of her jewel boxes—
the nearest lined
with lush,
velvet hills,
rippling off to my right.
Like the price tag
on a necklace
where it clasps,
a sign warns of the toll
to pay before we bejewel
more of her darkening night.
ON KAY RYAN’S FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
one fan wrote that the latest fad
is tattooing poems on bodies
and that Kay’s, being shorter than most
(her poems, not her body),
might be a good fit for the fad.
In the Facebook comment thread I replied
that those kids can’t know how wrinkly
their skin will be in coming years,
how the tattooed words might be distorted
into an unintended meaning.
When I saw another Facebook post
defining wrinkly as the opposite of irony,
how could I not visualize it tattooed
on a well-defined muscle before inevitable
wrinkles ironized it with Kay Ryan concision?
RECONSIDERING MY RELATIONSHIP TO THE ARTICHOKE
Between my molars and incisors
squirms the heart
of an artichoke,
a flower whose leaf-green
petals I'd stripped
before my front teeth had torn
and scraped them clean.
I had steamed the vegetable,
but first, it had to be unsheathed.
As I had clipped
the plant’s protective thorns,
each petal seemed
to be shaped
like a feline paw
with its own small claw.
If feasting on greens,
cooked or raw,
is preferable to dining on meat,
and if what I eat
is not a mammal
or other animal,
why when I consume an artichoke
do I feel like a cannibal?
INVISIBLY PEOPLED
From a dish left on the rug
beside your half-drunk coffee
an orange scent evaporates.
Your scent is still not off me.
Curved back, a glossy magazine
sprawls open where you started.
The real you has left the scene,
but you have not departed.
Your plane is leaving, and I leave
to join a friend. We watch TV.
When I return, the flashing red
announces you invitingly.
You're in elusive ether now,
a longed-for realm I cannot see –
one more departed man allowed
to people me invisibly.
Before you left, we talked of death.
You said it was an ocean
of everyone with no more breath
to fuel our world’s commotion.
Bare wisps of you still circling me
bring back your personality.
I think you're happy on the wing,
set free from my reality.
Connection gone, past midnight now,
too late for phones to ring,
I ponder what you mean to me.
Your absence leaves a sting.
THE GREEN BEANS FROM HIS GARDEN
The rough way she handled
what they immediately recognized
as their harmless relatives—
the thin, green beans
he had brought into her kitchen,
how she snapped off their ends
and sliced them in strips
before tossing them
into a see-through dish,
covering it, putting it in the microwave,
how she didn't seem to mind
the heat they were suffering
as steam erupted
when she lifted the top off
what had become their coffin,
and almost worse, the way she forked each bite
with such zeal, how it scared all of them,
scared the greens she had long cared for—
the pothos, the ivy, the Christmas cactus,
and the dieffenbachia—
how it made them tremble in their containers.
They had never seen her
so vigorously attack one of their own,
had never witnessed that aspect of her.
They were still cowering
when she washed her plate, wishing
that this visitor would be forbidden
from ever again bringing her
anything else from his garden
to fuel their nightmares.
NOT KEEPING UP
How soon will I succumb
to typing with my thumb
on an iPhone, Android,
or a new Samsung?
So far I have not bought
what everybody’s got.
Disliking my tech void,
I frown a lot.
In 1984
I thought I’d really scored
when my job required a four-
teen-pound laptop.
Since 1993
I’ve had a home PC
that lets me email,
using well-shaped keys.
Now mobile’s where it’s at.
I should be buying one stat,
but when I type on glass,
the screen emits a flash
and takes me to odd places
I do not want to go.
I can’t find what erases
and know I should not throw
the gadget someone’s lent me
at a vexing person texting.
How can I buy a gizmo
I find so darned perplexing?
NOTES
When I look up from the piano
to see birds scattered along power lines,
maybe five lines evenly spaced
strung from one pole to the next,
the birds become quarter and eighth
notes, as in a recent ad on PBS.
If you label the lines, “E, G, B, D, F,”
from your piano bench,
you’ve translated those wires into the treble clef.
Black Anguses grazing ridged hills
can provide a variation
on animal-inspired musical notation,
but since cows are so large, a piano composition
couldn’t begin to encompass them,
even using all 88 of its black and white keys.
Not tiny and airy like black-bird notes,
bovine notes might require a different instrument
and produce a different sound. Cows might wish
that their notes were as deep as the low notes
the planet makes 29 octaves below middle C.
So far as I know, though, neither humans
nor cows can hear whatever score
conducted from the planet’s core
makes the white-haired waves
toss, break, wake, and snore
as we watch them vary their beat
while crashing and susurring
against our shores.
[The following was not included when I submitted the poem:
http://www.pianopianoforte.com/piano_music/piano_music_english/the%20sound%20of%20the%20planets.html
The earth - and with it, each of the planets of the solar system - revolving around the sun makes a musical note so low it cannot be heard by the human ear. If we imagine a piano keyboard without limitation, the sound of the earth is a "C sharp" placed 29 octaves below middle C (about 4.7 meters [or 15 feet] left of the piano bench).]
COLONIZED
… or where the blame lies ….
Last year I read an article that gave me stunning news:
we’re made of human particles that microbes have infused.
By cell count we are nine-tenths germs; our own cells, ten percent.
We’re colonized, yet criticized for what we can’t prevent.
When microbes’ avid appetites keep my weak taste buds yearning
for chocolate ice cream, cakes, and pies that humans should be spurning,
I exercise. To my surprise, the microbes just move faster,
demanding goodies that expand my girth into disaster.
Since microbes rule, I see as cruel all diet interventions.
By germs I have been made a fool despite my best intentions.
THE POET AT OUR TABLE
So intent was she
on what her pen was writing
and scratching out
that the poet at our table
seemed to be inside an arbor
that protected her
from all the other poetry
at the gathering.
When I peeked across the table
to glance at her evolving creation,
I saw more words her pen had blotted
than had escaped censure.
Branching connectors of thoughts
knotted themselves
in a vine-like architecture she pruned in process,
possibilities her mind had pondered
that her pen had put an end to.
When she rose to read
what she had composed
in a focus that had omitted the rest of us,
her poem, excised of excess,
arrived as if it had never experienced
what I had surreptitiously witnessed.
LUNAR BALANCE
As I walk, I make the moon move.
When I stop to admire its balance
atop a hill against the bright blue afternoon,
it looks so diaphanous that I feel as if
I’m seeing through its icy whiteness.
I take a few more steps, and it follows me.
We pass between two phone poles, and I slide
the moon along their connecting wires
from one pole to the other until I decide
to free it from its choreographed sky dance.
Although I’ve long known the moon’s
gravitational effects on tides and on us,
I appreciate anew how our mutable moon
makes things happen, silently, without fuss, and how
with or without my help, it never loses its balance.
ENTHUSIASMS
[This poem is on the WHY JOKE page; please see navigation on the left.]
SEDUCTION
When those eye-catching, shapely forms
emerge from a nearby coastal town,
when they begin to undulate
in crimson pink and orange
and float themselves delicately
in my direction, I can almost ignore
their source. Instead I admire
Nature’s ability to glamorize the nasty
byproducts of the local oil refinery.
Watching how she applies her sunset palette
with unmatched expertise, I marvel
at how much better she is at seduction
than we are, even with our best,
most deceptive advertising.
"Directed Curves" by Robert Chapla
EXIT 27 WITHOUT A/C
Swerving off I-80, windows down
to suck in gusts of oven air, I sweat
the hairpin turn that swooshes me
under the canopy of freeway loops
above my California town.
Descending below the spaghetti tangle
of cement that swirls like thick pasta
on the boil, I remember other ways
I’ve seen that overhead configuration ―
as a complication of twisted sheets
after love-making, a snarl of laundry
ready for the washer, or the curving
conveyor belt of another summer’s
steamy factory job. Lately, when
my sweet teeth kick in, the winding
off-ramp has been salt-water taffy
with the color pulled out of it.
Looking up again, I await another image
to help me escape my current state. It comes
from the overhead’s edge, now the rim
of a meditator’s bowl I slide my thumb
against to make a calming hum, blocking out
the rumble atop the long gray ribbon
that ripples like a heat wave
going past me across the country, I-80
and its frayed off-ramps that others also ride
into their own small towns this hot July,
summoning strands of cool recollection
while navigating what seems to be
their daily, eternal ordinary.
HERDED
[This poem is on the Why Joke page; see navigation to the left; thanks.]
FATIGUE IS THE BEST PILLOW
after Benjamin Franklin's quotation
The nap I'd hated as a child
because it wrecked my play
I longed for in the office towards
the middle of the day.
At keyboard I would sink into
a soporific state
that neither chiding from my boss
nor coffee could abate.
Retired from that tedious job,
I have a better boss.
Fatigue commands, and I obey.
She has such gravitas.
Fatigue's a kinder master than
the boss who chided me.
Her pillow's soft, smooth, welcoming,
and best of all, it's free.
“SIMPLIFY
your life,” reads the sign
on my fridge. The letters
are large and black;
the writing, strong.
I ignore it. From under
its directive small words
on white strips peek out
in piecemeal poems.
Months before he died
my husband arranged them
from a magnetic poetry kit.
Overlapping their beginnings
and endings are faces
of family and friends.
I rotate their photos
with the years
and refresh shopping lists,
but the poems remain,
an undercurrent embracing
two sides of the fridge.
Why can't I simplify,
put the poem pieces back
in their box? Am I magnetized?
Why do I hold on like this?
Because I can't let go,
won't strip the fridge
of words he touched
that touched him.
OLD PHOTOS
Photos taken a dozen years ago
show a slender couple, we two,
you, my best, in our best year,
both of us supple, vibrant,
laughing, moving together
through these boxes
of still shots.
Now we’re apart – you,
a box of ashes in the closet,
I, occupying the box
of our living room, still
using the keyboard
to cope.
Looking at these photos
for the first time
since your death,
I’m surprised by feeling
suddenly the way I used to,
elastic, full of possibility,
ready to laugh,
at what you once said was
this experiment called life.
Your personality came through
for a second or two,
and you briefly
changed my chemistry,
those molecular doors
only you had the keys to.
When I've read "Question Mark" aloud, I've included a dedication to Prairie Home Companion's Guy Noir, who is always looking for the answers to life's persistent questions ....
QUESTION MARK
Old and pencil thin,
he walks bent over his slow cane,
so slight he almost floats
above the pavement.
On the same block
also in profile
a teen, sitting on the edge
of the sidewalk,
crouches over her phone,
both hands engaged
in texting,
her hair falling
straight
into my thinking
as I curl
over my sushi,
their images still with me,
all three of us
forming a shape
one sees everywhere,
the question mark of life
that our hunched spines
exaggerate.
FUMBLING
Fumbling at the door,
I feel the knob’s
familiar shape.
It shakes.
I can’t locate
the keyhole.
We’re at the seashore
forty years ago.
I’m in your car,
in the moonlight, in your lap.
We talk and watch the wind unwrap
the waves and sails on nearby boats.
I rack my brain to find the anecdote
that made me laugh
as you insisted and persisted
past youthful fumbling that
I’m glad I only half resisted.
FISH WRAP
On pavement or in carport drive
I see this morning's news, alive
last night, but now decaying fish wrap,
print, plastic-covered, loosely packed
in see-through blue, pale pink, chartreuse,
Post, Times, and Chron inert in hues
of rainbow swimmers, lying dead,
discarded catch, so far unread,
tossed while subscribers snoozed. Some snored
while happenings occurred, ignored.
TV and other screens show news
on smart phones, desktops. Choose your views.
Like too much else, new news moves fast,
forecasting fish wrap cannot last.
DRIVING IN RAIN
We traveled the wet roads once,
but you’ve been gone five years,
and it hasn’t rained in five months.
This afternoon the clouds finally let loose.
Expected accidents were announced.
Oily rain slicks were cited as the excuse.
Autos glisten and the air feels clean.
Red, green, and golden ivies
cling to the freeway sound walls
as if enjoying their bath with a drink.
Seeing those refreshed leaves
I think of you, much loved husband,
best road companion, funniest friend.
Past our working lives,
beholden to no one,
we’d nap when it rained
with no need to explain
or pretend,
but the windshield wipers
nod their negation
as if I’ve forgotten,
telling me
relentlessly,
the end, the end, the end.
RETURNING
Wind whips us, us two,
sitting on a metal bench
the way we did in high school.
From the back of a ferry
we watch the city
disappear over water.
San Francisco, buttoned up then,
nothing like it is now,
shimmers memories of youth.
The two next to us
are making their own memories.
Dark hair blowing, they focus
only on each other. They don’t see
the expansiveness of a bay beyond beauty,
gleaming like vinyl under a diamond needle,
playing last century tunes on rippling grooves.
Covered over by the ferry’s motor,
the faraway music bubbles into a wake of foam.
The two next to us melt into each other.
Silently we watch our watery path recede
in fading light, as we’re bumped and blown
over the briny currents towards home.
NEXUS
We’re tall structures, crammed into a corner
of a Michigan farmhouse, the bathroom
mirror reflecting us as we brush our teeth.
Far away, Lake Michigan reflects giant
structures packed along its shore, a crowd
of buildings called Chicago, able to sway
but not move. In this house we move,
commuting to the bathroom from its suburbs.
We travel invisible highways to and from
our current nexus, the city of us, we five,
upright, repetitiously performing our duty
with brushes. Atop Chicago’s tallest,
window washers do the same, scrubbing
rows of white windows to a clean gleam.
SHE CARRIES HERSELF
out of the coffee shop
into spring’s billowing day
as if her prow were not
high and voluptuous,
her stern in full sway.
Each fellow follows her
up to the swinging door
with his unrestrained eyes.
When she fidgets a bit
with a flexible strap,
and it suddenly breaks,
we're all surprised.
Luckily, youth prevails.
Her parts stay intact.
After she sails away,
men slowly relax
into their steaming brews
of boring decaf
while I shrug to myself
from my chair in dry dock,
long past my sailing days
ticked off by the clock.
EXPLANATION TO A GRIEF GROUP
He started with an empty blackboard.
Pairing illustration with explanation,
he drew a rectangle, trisected it,
and announced, “The first box
is for the living.” I located myself there.
“The middle box is the relationship
to the departed, and the far right box
is the departed.” To make death
definite, he erased the right box,
and you were gone. Then
he explained that we had lost
not only our loved one
but the connecting box between,
where most of us remained stuck.
He erased that box too, leaving us
diminished by two thirds
of what we had before needing
this group of others like us,
fractions of our former selves.
FENCED
Wrists without watches
freed us as youngsters.
"Two hairs past a freckle,"
we'd giggle when asked
to tell them the time,
which then seemed so vast.
Two shrubs past a cow
on my route near its bend
make me glance at my wrist,
where time has an end.
Now worn by a watch,
fenced by schedules, I’m led
like a freckle of cow,
jogging off to her shed.
TO OUR CALIFORNIA LANDLORD
Please replace these weatherworn mats.
Most of their threads are missing or smashed
like yellow shags gone flat. It’s August,
and they’ve been like this for months.
Your summer neglect disturbs our aesthetic bent.
How can we cows, horses, and llamas abide
such aridity, much less thrive on the decrepit dryness
you provide? Carpets should be lush and plump,
not rough cement. We need fall's velvet green
to walk upon. Turn on the rain. We’ll pay the rent.
MANGO
I hadn’t eaten a mango since childhood,
so I bought one. For nearly a week
the fruit ripened on my kitchen counter,
losing green as its orange and red deepened.
When it gave enough to my touch,
I peeled its circumference, as my dad had done.
Gazing at late afternoon clouds over water,
I leaned against the counter to begin.
The first sliced bite of yellow flesh
entered my mouth. Clouds rolled back,
and the sun began its early winter plunge.
Mango juice rolled down my chin into the sink.
Each piece barely resisted my teeth and tongue
before giving way. Over and over I tasted,
finally opening my eyes for a last glimpse
of mango and sun, slippery orbs of color,
disappearing together.
after Mary Reusch's "Chelberg House Wash"
When hung clothes move like this, they must use
fastened clothespins for shoes. These small brakes
hold their place on a rope stretching longer than most.
Treetops shade a low roof, but that angular slant
of hot light off the sidewall is seen upside down
by the pair as a portal for ghosts.
Spooked, they dance. Overalls have no arms,
only straps to control the unsettled shirt, puffing out
in a spasm of fear not quite clear to the wearer.
And who’s that? Who could be so unknown,
so unseen? If a girl, does she feel (I hope not)
that the care of these garments ensnares her?
Did the male do the wash, or did she, somewhere else?
We assume there are folks in the house.
(What we've said speaks of us more than them.)
Shadows grow, breezes blow questions back, stop,
and start up again, while our probing ignores
thinning sleeves, a torn hem.
AMYGDALA
On a Scientific American
PBS presentation
Alan Alda
explained the brain’s amygdala.
He pointed out its location
at the end of the hippocampus,
where whatever stamps us
leads to memorization.
When showing scans of male brains,
Alda seemed surprised
that only their right amygdalas
lit up during emotion
as opposed to females,
whose left amygdalas did the same.
He went on to explain
how women, when rehashing an argument,
will review the details of it,
which is the left brain’s specialization,
while men will remember
the big picture,
the focus of the right brain,
and recall that overall, they won.
BERKELEY POETRY WALK
I like poetry
that takes me out
on a limb
and reels me in again,
me, a late sixties
freeze-dried fish,
principal-punished
school skipper,
reading a Rosetta stone's
fourth language
above the cement
without a looking glass,
watching words swim
past their origins
and dictionary definitions,
some hidden by sidewalk trash,
then leaving my finned footprints
near the Addison Street plaques
to let the gleaming words
carry me, sated at last.
HEART OF DARKNESS
[This poem is the last on my CAFFEINATED POEMS page; please see navigation to the left.]
BEFORE 6 A.M.
Why this need awoke me,
brought me here before dawn,
two cats at my feet,
discombobulated into expecting food
hours too early,
one yowling in his cranky, old man way
(the one who was your teenage rough-house cat),
the other subdued but expectant,
why it, or maybe you,
brought me to this living room we shared,
where you so often sat
alone before dawn under a single lamp,
peeling an orange, drinking coffee,
thinking in the early hours about your own death, oh yes,
I have that documented, since when you left,
you left your journals open –
Reading them after you died
brought no relief.
You were so much more in life
than on the page,
having left there your tortured, inky catharsis,
whereas I had seen your joy in living, your easy laughter,
and known my best self with you.
Why am I here so early at this task?
Maybe it's you who woke me to write,
to get this on the page
before I too am gone to wherever you are,
to make me submit
this official, written request,
this order, this command,
as I do now:
Be there to meet me.